1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to palpation as practiced in all fields of medicine by any class of practitioner including lay practitioners. It also relates to the human ability to sense through touch elastic and hysteretic behavior in living or dead organic material (tissue) and inorganic material.
2. Description of Related Art
Palpation is an integral component of a thorough medical examination. Physicians or medical practitioners are able to assess the body and make a diagnosis based on palpatory skill. Palpatory findings also guide hands-on treatment of the body for therapeutic purposes. Until now, the science behind the art of palpation has been poorly understood.
Health care providers who practice manual manipulative medicine, for example, claim to have abilities to detect and treat subtle dysfunctions of the neuromusculoskeletal system. Palpation is often the most important factor, if not the only factor, guiding diagnosis and treatment.
Of particular interest is the assessment of motion quality in terms of tissue response. This is more than a degree of range of motion. Tissue response is how the body reacts to energy transfer. It is the result of a given force supplied, maintained and withdrawn. Terms such as ease of motion and stiffness have been used to describe this dimension of palpatory diagnosis.
Studies have been conducted and reported to define and quantify elasticity, stiffness and motion quality of the human body. These studies, however, have not been able to correlate the mechanical and clinical concepts of elasticity, stiffness and motion quality. Palpation involves practitioner assessment of elasticity, stiffness and motion quality and the hysteretic effect that such tissue presents to the practitioner.
Other studies attempting to measure elasticity, stiffness and motion quality have been unsuccessful because they could not establish a correct measurement parameter for palpation. More specifically, these studies used a palpatory model and found a high degree of inter-practitioner correlation. However, palpatory techniques learned on this model did not translate to palpation of human tissue, and thus showed poor inter-practitioner correlation on human tissue.
In addition, the inorganic mechanical model used for these studies used only elastic components. That is, this inorganic model used springs that had an elastic coefficient of 1.0. In other words, the model was fully (completely) elastic, lacked inelastic features and did not have inelastic moving parts to palpate, i.e., individual parts having an elastic coefficients valued between 0.0, completely inelastic, and 1.0, completely elastic. Thus, this model did not have any hysteretic effect to present to the palpating practitioner. The practitioner's only learned the differences between elastic moving parts. When palpating human tissue, poor inter-practitioner correlation resulted because an understanding of the effects of hysteresis was missing.
It would, therefore, be desirable to provide an inorganic elastic hysteretic palpatory training device and method of use thereof that can provide to the practitioner, upon palpation, both elastic and hysteretic response.